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Tornados, cyclones and hurricanes

Tornado (Latin tonare, "to

thunder"): violent whirling wind,
characteristically accompanied by a
funnel-shaped cloud extending down
from a cumulonimbus cloud. Commonly
known as a twister or cyclone, a tornado
can be a few meters to about a kilometer
wide where it touches the ground, with
an average width of a few hundred meters. It can move over land for
distances ranging from short hops to many kilometers, causing great
damage wherever it descends. The funnel is made visible by the dust
sucked up and by condensation of water droplets in the center of the
funnel. The same condensation process makes visible the generally
weaker sea-going tornadoes, called waterspouts that occur most
frequently in tropic waters. Most tornadoes spin counterclockwise in
the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern, but occasional
tornados reverses this behavior.
The exact mechanisms that cause a tornado to form are still not
fully understood, but the funnels are always associated with violent
motions in the atmosphere, including strong updrafts and the passage
of fronts. They develop within low-pressure areas of high winds; the
speed of the funnel winds themselves is often placed at more than 480
km/h (more than 300 mph), although speeds of more than 800 km/h
(500 mph) have been estimated for extremely strong storms. Damage
to property hit by a tornado results both from these winds and from
the extremely reduced pressure in the center of the funnel, which
causes structures to explode when they are not sufficiently ventilated
to adjust rapidly to the pressure difference. The pressure reduction is
in keeping with Bernoulli's principle, which states that pressure is
reduced as velocity increases.
Tornadoes are most common and strongest in temperate
latitudes, and in the U.S. they tend to form most frequently in the early
spring; the "tornado season" shifts toward later months with increasing
latitude. The number of funnels observed each year could vary greatly
in any given region.

Cyclone, in strict meteorological terminology, an area of low

atmospheric pressure surrounded by a wind system blowing, in the
northern hemisphere, in a counterclockwise direction. A corresponding
high-pressure area with clockwise winds is known as an anticyclone. In
the southern hemisphere these wind directions are reversed. Cyclones
are commonly called lows and anticyclones highs. The term cyclone
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has often been more loosely applied to a

storm and disturbance attending such
pressure systems, particularly the violent
tropical hurricane and the typhoon, which
center on areas of unusually low pressure.

Hurricane, name applied to

migratory tropical cyclones that originate
over oceans in certain regions near the
equator, and particularly to those arising
in the West Indian region, including the
Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. Hurricane-type cyclones in the
western Pacific are known as typhoons.
Most hurricanes originate within the doldrums, a narrow
equatorial belt characterized by intermittent calms, light variable
breezes, and frequent squalls, and lying between the northeast and
southeast trade winds. As the doldrums of the Atlantic are situated
largely to the north of the equator, hurricanes do not occur in the
South Atlantic Ocean. The Pacific doldrums extend north and south of
the equator; thus hurricanes occur in the South and North Pacific
oceans.
Hurricanes consist of high-velocity winds blowing circularly
around a low-pressure center, known as the eye of the storm. The low-
pressure center develops when the warm, saturated air prevalent in
the doldrums is forced upward by denser, cooler air. From the edge of
the storm toward its center, the atmospheric pressure drops sharply
and the wind velocity rises. The winds attain maximum force close to
the point of lowest pressure (about 724 torr, or about 28.5 in. of
mercury). The diameter of the area affected by winds of destructive
force may exceed 240 km (150 mi). Gale winds prevail over a larger
area, averaging 480 km (300 mi) in diameter. The strength of a
hurricane is rated from 1 to 5. The mildest, Category 1, has winds of at
least 120 km/h (74 mph). The strongest (and rarest), Category 5, has
winds that exceed 250 km/h (155 mph). Within the eye of the storm,
which averages 24 km (15 mi) in diameter, the winds stop and the
clouds lift, but the seas remain very violent.
Hurricanes generally move in a path resembling the curve of a
parabola. In the northern hemisphere the storms usually travel first in
a northwesterly direction and in the higher latitudes turn toward the
northeast. In the southern hemisphere the usual path of the hurricane
is initially to the southwest and subsequently to the southeast.
Hurricanes travel at varying rates. In the lower latitudes the rate
ranges from 8 to 32 km/h (5 to 20 mph) and in the higher latitudes it
may increase to as much as 80 km/h (50 mph). Those areas in which
the hurricane winds blow in the same direction as the general
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movement of the storm are subjected to the maximum destructive

violence of the hurricane.
Since 1943 U.S. military aircraft have been flying into hurricanes
to measure wind velocities and directions, the location and size of the
eye, the pressures within the storms, and their thermal structure. A
coordinated system of tracking hurricanes was developed in the mid-
1950s, and periodic improvements have been made over the years.
Radar, sea-based recording devices, geosynchronous weather
satellites (since 1966), and other devices now supply data to the
National Hurricane Center in Florida, which follows each storm virtually
from the beginning. Improved systems of prediction and
communication have been able to help minimize loss of life in
hurricanes, but property damage is still heavy, especially in coastal
regions. The strongest hurricane to hit the western hemisphere in the
20th century, Gilbert, devastated Jamaica and parts of Mexico in 1988
with winds that gusted up to 350 km/h (218 mph). Destructive
hurricanes in recent U.S. history include Agnes (1972), with $3 billion
in damage and 134 deaths, Hugo (1989), with more than $4 billion in
damage and more than 50 deaths, and Andrew (1992), with an
estimated $12 billion in damage, more than 50 dead, and thousands
left homeless.

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